Turf Zone – NewtonChurch
September has been a disappointing turfing month, initial plans to rack up some points, takes and uniques for the Turf Ultimate Region Fight 2025 simply did not happen. Nor did ideas to attempt the 200 takes over 24-hours for the challenging El Staminatore medal or the Diversiest medal, which requires 1000 different (round unique) zones within a single round. The reasons for this failure were three-fold. One was a family illness requiring numerous trips down to the Scottish Borders and various hospitals visits as well. The second was a lot of wasted time waiting in for flooring contractors never to turn up. The third was a heavy bout of the dreaded lurgy.
Even now, weeks later, while mother is on the mend and the flooring is now finished, I’m still suffering from the dreaded lurgy. However, when I read about there being two new variants of Covid, called Stratus and Nimbus, I wondered if my dreaded lurgy was someone more sinister and looking at the symptoms for the above, which matched mine exactly, it does look like I may not have the dreaded lurgy after all. Well, well.
Now, with the start of Round #184, I was wondering if I might give turf a miss for a while, even skip the entire Round? But could I actually do that? Could I really not take a single zone for 28-days? Could be quite a challenge I suspect. I could see me easily failing when, for example, a new zone pops up on my doorstep, an easy FTT for the collection. Or perhaps a bunch of TvT zones appear close to home. Would I be able to resist? And the answer to that is a big NO, in capitals!
The first enticement was a fresh TvT appearing out at King’s Acre golf club, the turfer holding it going by the name of Reacher. Being only a mile and a half away as the crow flies, it’s an easy ride from the house. Add to that the fact that the 7th October offers a full moon, a harvest super moon, and any thoughts of giving turf a miss for a while go straight out the window. I always like to get out turfing on the night of a full moon, always feel bathing in the light of the moon does wonders for the soul. Of course, tonight was overcast, so no sightings of the moon but you always know it up there.
Now, during my nocturnal rambles on the Trek Farley fat bike, one topic that popped into my mind was a special technique sometimes employed in turfing called Armhåleturfa in Sweden, commonly known as armpit turfing, arm-pitting or armpitying, the verb of armpit. The technique is used to block the GPS signal, commonly by placing the phone in your armpit, which stops the player icon, or turfman, from moving out of the zone, even when the turfer themselves has left the zone. This technique seems to be used on public transport such as trains and buses which may not stop at the zone. Having tried this, often hit-and-miss technique on a few occasions, all failing miserably, I’ve decided to carry out some investigations and see if I can find a way of using arm-pitting reliably.
The first thing I need to get my head around is how all this works. The key seems to be allowing the zone take to begin with your turfman icon moving into the zone, and during the take you need to block the GPS signal. Some turfers have success my tucking the phone into the armpit, or even sitting on the phone, however, I’ve never had any success with this and I need a method that will work each and every time while riding the bike. But how to do that?
I’ve read that 4-layers of aluminium foil wrapped around the phone may work but that’s just too much hassle, takes too long and is open to error. So, what I’ve done is purchased a special RFID-blocking waist* bag that is effectively a Faraday cage, and should block any incoming or outgoing signal, including GPS. Wearing this while cycling will allow me to quickly place the phone into the bag, thus blocking the GPS signal, and retrieve the phone at the next zone. Of course, this might not work, but I’ve bought the bag on Amazon and its free returns.
There’s still a few unanswered questions. At what point during the zone take do you block the GPS signal? And, if you are planning on taking the next zone, at what point do you un-block the GPS signal? Another question is about the legality of using this technique. Is it cheating or simply just good turfmanship?
I read that the quickest time for taking ten zones, currently held by turfer JimmyAIK94 with a time of 4:15, had employed this method. Now that looks like an interesting challenge! However, it won’t be easy. If I block the phone GPS signal by placing it inside the waist bag I cannot see the screen and cannot determine when I’m entering a zone. Unless, I rely on the “taking zone” notification voice. Back with more after some field trials.
*It didn’t work, so was returned to Amazon.
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